Red And Blue Health Insurance

Four out of five – 83% – of all the signups came in December, when healthgov.com was performing about as well as the better state websites. Most customers faced a pretty uniform environment: the same law, an identical or very similar website experience. The variation must be due to local factors. …

The most economical hypothesis is that it’s down to state cultures and above all state policies. The governors of Blue states have been trying to make ACA work, with positive media messages, help to navigators and so on. Setting up their own websites is an effect of this political support rather than an important independent variable. Those of Red states have been trying to make it fail.

Which is why West Virginia is so instructive. These governors are directly preventing their own constituents from getting health insurance at close to no expense for the state. And right now, they’re popular for it. The question in my mind is: at what point will denying people a massive sense of relief and actual access to affordable healthcare remain popular? That will be a vital American test between pragmatism and ideology. Perhaps the best measure of when and if the “fever” on the far right will break is how long they can keep up the pressure and the arguments and the propaganda to have their citizens vote against having reliable and affordable access to a doctor?

Or to put it more bluntly: How many poor red state voters are prepared to die before their time to make an ideological point?